Professor Nguyen specializes in the study of the United States in the world, with spatial focus on Southeast Asia and temporal interest in the Cold War. She is currently working two projects. The first is a comprehensive history of the 1968 Tet Offensive and the second explores the role of gender, people's diplomacy, and transnational networks of anti-war activism during the Vietnam War.

She is the author of Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam, which won the Society for Military History (SMH) Edward M. Coffman Prize, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Stuart L. Bernath Prize, the UKY Department of History Alice S. Hallam Prize, was a finalist for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians First Book Prize, and earned her an invitation to participate in the 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Professor Nguyen is the General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War (3 vols.) and she and Professor Paul T. Chamberlin are the Co-Editors of the "Cambridge Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations" Series.

“Waging War on All Fronts: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War, 1969-1972” in Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977. Eds. Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 185-203.

“Cold War Contradictions: Toward an International History of the Second Indochina War, 1969-1973” in Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National and Transnational Perspectives. Eds. Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 219-249.

“Sino-Vietnamese Split in the Post-Tet War in Indochina, 1968-1975” in The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-1979. Eds. Sophie Quinn-Judge and Odd Arne Westad (London: Routledge Press, 2006): 12-32.

“Vietnamese Perceptions of the French-Indochina War” in Indochina in the Balance: New Perspectives on the First Vietnam War. Eds. Mark Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006): 41-55.